East-West Trade: The View from the United States
- PDF / 4,056,515 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 523.8 x 799.2 pts Page_size
- 22 Downloads / 228 Views
INTRODUCTION
*RobertD. Hisrich is Associate Professor of Marketingin the School of Management, Boston College. **MichaelP. Peters is Associate Professor of Marketing in the School of Management, Boston College. ***ArnoldK.Weinstein is Dean of the ArthurD. Little Management Education Institute. This research was conducted before the recent hostilities in Afghanistan. It is highly probable that results of a survey taken today would show significantly different results. This project was supported by a grant from the ArthurD. Little Management Education Institute, Cambridge, MA. Journal of International Business
Studies, Winter 1981
109
Palgrave Macmillan Journals is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to Journal of International Business Studies ® www.jstor.org
given a much more favorable rating on product/market attributes than were the 5 Eastern European countries included in the study. Overall, the U.S. was also rated higher than the USSR in 10 selected product classes.5
Roleof Consumer In this article the opportunity for trade expansion with communist countries is in East-West analyzed by focusing on the consumers' willingness to buy communist products Trade and their views on East-West Trade. The primaryquestion to be considered is: "Willthe attitudes of U.S. consumers present a significant barrierto increased trade between communist countries and the United States?" The willingness of U.S. consumers to purchase goods from communist countries is an important element in the expansion of East-West Trade. Duringthe five-year period 1973-1977, the U.S. trade surplus with communist countries was close to $10 billion6;the 1978 surplus was $2.7 billion; in 1979 it was $4.9 billion; and the first 5 months of 1980 showed a surplus of $2.1 billion. Iftrade relations between the East and West are to evolve into more routine commercial ventures, then the problem of the trade surplus will have to be resolved. Otherwise the communist countries will continue to purchase only high technology, not otherwise available in their home markets. This one-sided transfer of technology has, of course, some very serious public policy implications. It is interesting to note that the continued expansion of U.S. trade with communist countries has occurred in spite of some very serious problems. Among the problems to be overcome by U.S. businesses in the desire to expand their activities in communist countries are: 1. Increasing insistence by communist countries for counter-trade agreements and the inabilityof small- and medium-sized U.S. firms to dispose of countertrade goods. A counter-trade agreement links the sale of U.S. goods to a reciprocal purchase of goods from a communist country.7 2. Centralized purchasing through foreign trade offices and the inability to deal directly with end-user customers.8 3. Negotiating a firm's transaction with a foreign trade office can take up to 3 years, requiringvery heavy front end investment and substantial amounts of senior executive time and talent.9 4. Growing co
Data Loading...
